Housing and Population in Imperial Ostia and Rome

Abstract

In the accounts of contemporaries imperial Rome looms as the largest and most magnificent capital of its age, and it is only natural, therefore, that modern scholars have attempted to determine with some precision both the size of the city's population and the way in which that population was housed. The evidence relating to the two closely connected problems is both archaeological and written : the ruins of ancient houses which still exist in Rome and the literary works which deal in part with the number of inhabitants or the buildings in the capital.The remains of several relatively well-preserved antique structures in Rome lend substance to Guido Calza's assertion that the apartment-house was the most common form of domestic architecture in the imperial capital. The ruins of one such dwelling (Plate VI, 1) are embedded in the city walls built by the Emperor Aurelian in the third century A.D. Located just south of the Porta Tiburtina, the remains comprise the garden facade of a four-storey brick building which originally contained apartments whose plans varied from floor to floor. This variation in the layout of flats within the building may be traced today in the placement of windows on each level.

Latitude, urbanization, age, and sex as risk factors for vitamin D deficiency disease in the Roman Empire

“…Many of those buried in the Isola Sacra cemetery may have lived for some or all of their lives in Ostia. Both documentary and physical evidence indicates the presence of multi‐storey buildings, mainly apartment blocks, in Ostia (Packer, ; Packer, ; Storey, ; Wilson, ). In response to safety concerns, Imperial legislation restricted heights to about 17–20 m, but reiteration of these laws suggests that they were regularly breached (Scobie, ).…”

“…One of our cemetery sites, Isola Sacra, lies 1–2 km from the Roman port town of Ostia, at the mouth of the River Tiber, Italy. Ostia had a high density of multi‐storey apartment blocks that could potentially have prevented sunlight reaching ground level in adjacent streets, as well as consisting of densely‐packed 1‐ and 2‐room apartments on the upper levels with only small windows to provide light (Packer, ; Scobie, ). This type of building was lacking in western provinces of the Empire, where urbanism was less developed (Storey, ).…”

Introduction: the politics and practices of apartment living

“…Multi-unit properties are buildings with multiple dwellings or units within them. They have existed for many hundreds of years, with examples dating from Roman times (Packer, 2012). Multi-owned properties are properties where each dwelling or unit can be owned separately.…”

Calculating the population of a Roman provincial town: (Conimbriga, Prov. Lusitania, Portugal)

“…31 From Beloch 1886;Hin 2007and Scheidel 2007cto Calza 1917, Girri 1956, Packer 1967Brunt 1971Brunt [2 nd ed. 1987Cascio 1994;Storey 1997 andFrier 2000; to offer a diachronic overview without concern for thouroughness.…”